The Return of Photobucket?

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The company is trying to make a comeback as more than just a site for forgotten photos, though usage has dramatically declined over the years, and it faces significantly more competition than when it first launched in 2003. Once accounting for 2 percent of US internet traffic by hosting photos for sites like eBay and Myspace, Photobucket is now somewhere in the range of the 1,500th most-visited website in the US, according to Alexa rankings. But under new management, the company is currently in the middle of an apology tour, trying to regain the public’s trust after a sudden, exorbitant price increase that had its remaining users accusing the company of extortion two years ago.

Photobucket now wants to be seen as the site you can trust to store your photos forever. It’s a major turn from just a couple years ago — in June 2017, Photobucket quietly introduced a $399 annual fee to embed images on third-party sites. The site gave zero warning, just a blog post announcing its new terms of service, which didn’t mention the price change. When the changes went into effect, millions of hot-linked images on the internet broke overnight, only displaying a speedometer blaring the message, “PLEASE UPDATE YOUR ACCOUNT TO ENABLE 3RD PARTY HOSTING.” With 20 million users hosting images on sites like Amazon and eBay, Leonard guesses about 60 million images went dark during that time. The images were finally turned back on nearly a year later, when Photobucket replaced the executive team, including CEO John Corpus, and Leonard stepped in.

“That was just the result of a short-sighted decision from the previous management team, in an effort to get immediate results,” Leonard says. “Saying, ‘we’re going to force you into a single plan and charge you $400’, that’s not a realistic price.”

Photobucket now has more accessible plans that range from $4.99 a month for a 25GB Beginner plan, to an $11.99 unlimited image hosting Expert plan. Leonard stresses that the company will always have a free plan, which allows storage of up to 250 images. That’s a small number compared to what services from big tech companies like Google can offer, which is unlimited photo storage on Google Photos (as long as they’re compressed to 16 megapixels). But Leonard is confident that the people paying for subscriptions understand that hosting services cost money, and are drawn to the simplicity of the site. “I believe that we can happily coexist with the larger tech companies,” he says. “We pride ourselves on not being a social media platform. There’s room in the marketplace for companies that focus solely on photos.”

Last month, it introduced a “Bill of Rights” that promises that Photobucket will never delete its users’ photos, provided the photos don’t violate its terms of service. The news comes as a response to its competitor Flickr, which was acquired by SmugMug and began deleting user photos that went over the 1,000 photo limit for free accounts earlier in March. The outcry was immediate, and Flickr was hit with an exodus of users who opted to download their photos rather than to upgrade to a Pro subscription. The backlash to a once-free service asking for a subscription fee is familiar territory for Photobucket....

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